Search

Friday, 27 February 2015

Modern slavery refers to
the slavery that continues to take place in today’s world. The estimate of
people who are a part of slavery would be around 21 million to 29 million to
this date. Modern slavery is a multi-billion dollar industry which generates almost
$35 billion per annum. Although slavery is found to be illegal and unlawful in
almost every country, it is STILL found present in most of the countries, which
is disheartening to see. Slavery found in parts of the world has many types
from bonded labor to sex slavery to forced migrant labor or early OR forced
marriage to child labor. All these are considered as slavery and people
experiencing these are said to be slaves.

After spending more than
ten years each in Gulf countries, I realized how terrible
the weather of these countries is. It is hot, humid and suffocating for people
like us. But the thousands and thousands of construction workers from India, Pakistan,
Nepal and Bangladesh don’t feel the same way. It hurts to see how they are only
paid $15 per day for doing work like carrying bricks on their backs in heavy
heat, for 8-12 hours per day. Besides their pay, it is disrespectful how
employers take advantage of workers who can’t read and are forced to sign
contracts which they have absolutely no clue about. They are forced to stay in
small and suffocated rooms which are cramped up by other workers.

They are made to live far
away from their family and are never able to know what is happening back home
as they are working day and night, night and day, thousands of miles away from
their beloved ones just so that their family doesn’t go to sleep hungry. Having
their pay kept at the Western Union poverty line, trade unions are banned in
the many countries so these slaves can’t even voice their opinions out. Employers
trick these employees by keeping
their passports and basically never letting them go back. They are
forcefully made to stay and work for them and decent working conditions are
just NOT a part of this contract.

Several groups like the
ILO, Human Rights watch etc. have tried to spread awareness on this case
and while we expats read these articles and attend these seminars pretty often,
we never empathize about the exploitation of poor and helpless workers. All of us
people eventually go back to our daily routines without bothering about these workers. Some people give an excuse for this act that maybe these workers don’t
have a job available back home and as long as the employer is giving them food
and shelter, they are good to go. I find this argument extremely pointless and
sad!

We see no change coming in
this case anytime soon however individuals like bloggers, journalists,
teachers, professors, ambassadors and imams can always help out by spreading
the word and making people aware. The social media is a strong mean of
communication and it should be put to its best use to voice out the struggles
and hardships these workers have to go through.